FORT WORTH (1080 KRLD) - Fort Worth's cargo airport is being renamed from "Alliance Airport" to "Perot Field Fort Worth Alliance Airport." H. Ross Perot Sr donated 380 acres for the airport's construction in 1988.
Since then, it has grown to become the 20th largest cargo airport in the United States. It was the first in the world to be designated for industrial use.
"This remarkable commercial magnet set the standard on what needed to be done, what could be done and how to do it," says Allan McArtor, who was FAA administrator when the airport was first proposed.
Over the past three years, the amount of cargo passing through Alliance Airport, now Perot Field, has increased 138%. The airport handled 2.4 billion pounds of cargo in 2021, an increase of 46% from 2020. The FAA says it has provided $310 million to expand the airport over the past 30 years, including money to extend the two runways to 11,000 feet.
"Continuing investments by the FAA have contributed to the airport we have here today," says Ignacio Flores, Office of Airports director for the FAA's Southwest Region. "This has enabled the airport to welcome a lot of cargo, in particular, Amazon, a significant cargo operator at the airport."
Hillwood Properties, a Perot company, designed AllianceTexas as a 27,000 acre master-planned community around the airport. Hillwood says the area now has 560 companies operating there with 66,000 jobs. Since 1989, the company says it has had an $111 billion economic impact and paid $3.4 billion in taxes to local governments.
"At the time we began construction of the airport, Mr. Perot said the following: 'Go back in history. Many of the great cities grew up around ports. The great cities of the 21st century will be built around airports.'" says Hillwood Executive Vice President William Burton.
Perot Field recently completed additional hangars and a "fixed-base operator," which can provide aircraft maintenance and hospitality. Ross Perot Jr. says AllianceTexas has stayed flexible. He says that flexibility has allowed the airport to draw an American Airlines maintenance facility and BNSF Railway.
In the future, he says AllianceTexas' "Mobility Innovation Zone" shows the airport will continue to evolve.
"If you go back into the 80s, no one knew what the internet was. No one had heard of a 'Facebook.' No one had heard of an 'Amazon.' We had the flexibility with the city council to bring all those companies into this project," he says.
Facebook has built a data center at AllianceTexas, and Amazon operates a distribution hub there.
The Mobility Innovation Zone says congestion costs trucking companies $90 billion a year; 94% of car crashes are caused by human error. AllianceTexas says it is working to achieve 30% autonomous truck adoption by 2030.
Earlier this year, Hillwood partnered with the company, TuSimple, to begin adding autonomous trucks into the area. TuSimple has a one million square foot facility in the development to serve as a stop on an autonomous freight network.
AllianceTexas says the Mobility Innovation Zone gives companies a place to test and develop new technologies.
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